Holy Water

Paul M. Baker was scheduled to chat over breakfast about the book he recently published about his career as a basketball coach and playing various sports while he grew up in Baltimore.You know, Memory Lane stuff.But just 48 hours before Christmas, Baker unexpectedly had something else playing on his mind -- a funeral. The Mass at St. Leo's Roman Catholic Church in Little Italy definitely was not how he had imagined spending that morning, but he had to go.That's because Baker, an ex-coach who still squeezes a living from basketball, is working through his extensive attic of Baltimore sports memories, and indelibly, Felix Bucci was among them.

A lady friend, who went to Seton High School in the 1960s, remembers a fine arts course where one of the nuns announced on a spring afternoon, "Today we'll be looking at paintings from the Renaissance period. There will be a few paintings where women are not fully clothed. Those of you who feel uncomfortable with this will be allowed to leave the room."We think tenderly of such overprotectiveness now and wish to make our own innocence retroactive. At Notre Dame Prep, we discover a little belatedly, they've been showing their young ladies a porno movie that disguises itself as a documentary.

How many ministers does it take to bless one bathroom in a mission center? A dozen, all laughing."It's like a fraternity party," said one clergyman in a tight spot between a large old bathtub and the wall. "Let's see how many we can squeeze in."The pastors prayed, "Bathe us with your grace, that our lives may give witness to the goodness of your creation."Kathy Brown, director of the Shepherd's Staff mission for needy people, invited the ministers to join in the blessings for each room before the center reopened yesterday at its new location in Westminster.

For movie lovers, there's no reason to see John Q. except during a fit of insomnia when it shows up on late-night cable. All that makes it bearable in the theater is the anger it sets off in the audience over America's medical mismanagement. Remember the crack about HMOs that brought down the house in As Good As It Gets? John Q. uses outrage over our health care system to fuel an entire two-hour hostage drama. The spluttering it rouses from insurance-burned viewers has far more vitality than the actual content of the movie.

On July 7, 1806, a procession of priests and "junior ecclesiastics" led Bishop John Carroll of Baltimore to the southwestern corner of the hilltop plot that would be the site of America's first Catholic cathedral. Carroll sprinkled the first foundation stone with "blessed water," according to one account, while the assembled clergy repeated the 127th Psalm: "Unless the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it." They sang "Veni, Creator Spiritus," a hymn invoking the Holy Spirit.

On Sunday, I attended mass with my 79-year-old grandmother. Two months ago, she lost her husband, my grandfather. Ever since that day, she could not have a more positive attitude about moving onward in her life. This strength she so fervently displays day to day, she wholeheartedly attributes to her faith. As her top admirer, and as someone who had considered herself a faithful Catholic for much of her life, I decided to begin attending church again to discover this unyielding faith my grandmother seems to possess.

MOSCOW -- Faith brought a thousand people to an old war monument here yesterday, faith in the redemptive power of a man who in life was loving, mild and inadequate.In death, the murdered Czar Nicholas II has become something else altogether. Above the priests and uniformed Cossacks and kerchiefed old women who came to mark his 130th birthday, the banners flapping in the warm breeze bore his likeness as if that of an icon."I think the czar fulfilled his mission, which was like Christ's," said Valentina Shatskaya.

Today, you can insert a coin or card in the appropriate machine and get candy, gum, drinks, telephone service or even cash. The idea of a coin-operated machine has been around for quite some time, however.The first was used to dispense holy water in ancient Greece. In the 1850s, tobacco boxes were kept on tavern counters; the smoker inserted a coin and was able to fill his pipe with tobacco or buy a cigarette.Machines later dispensed stamps, gum and perfume. Fortune-telling, strength-testing, picture-show and gaming-skill machines soon followed.

For die-hard boccie players, winters in Baltimore have typically meant a gloomy hiatus from Little Italy's outdoor courts. What Baltimore lacked, many lamented, was an indoor boccie court - like the kinds some of the players had competed on in tournaments as far away as Canada. That all changed yesterday in the gymnasium of a church in Highlandtown. Including the Little Italy regulars and a foursome from Delaware, boccie players descended on Our Lady of Pompei Roman Catholic Church off Conkling Street for the opening - and blessing - of what organizers called the first regulation-size indoor court in Maryland.

WASHINGTON - As Republicans sort out the reasons for their defeat, they likely will overlook or dismiss the gorilla in the pulpit. Three little letters, great big problem: G-O-D. I'm bathing in holy water as I type. To be more specific, the evangelical, right-wing branch of the GOP is what ails the erstwhile conservative party and will continue to afflict and marginalize its constituents if reckoning doesn't soon cometh. Simply put: Armband religion is killing the Republican Party. And the truth - as long as we're setting ourselves free - is that if one were to eavesdrop on private conversations among the party intelligentsia, one would hear precisely that.